The present invention relates to an arrangement for managing multiple telephone lines terminating at a single location and, more particularly, to a multiplexing/demultiplexing scheme useful with digital data to control the management of the multiple telephone lines.
Hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) networks are rapidly evolving to support a variety of telecommunications services in addition to traditional broadcast-type video services. In particular, HFC networks are being utilized to provide data services, including high speed Internet access. Cable network operators are expected to be providing medium- to high-penetration rate telephony services in the near future.
Telecommunications services, such as plain old telephone service (POTS), can be provided through the use of a unit located on the side of a home, or in a centralized location in the residence (or business). This unit, which forms the interface between the HFC network and the telephone-based customer premise equipment (CPE) is often referred to in the art as a xe2x80x9ccommunications gatewayxe2x80x9d, or CG. The CG contains various line cards that provide an interface between the HFC network and the traditional telephones, for example, using a xe2x80x9cPOTS cardxe2x80x9d located in the CG. The CG transmits and receives data over the HFC network using a particular protocol, which in a preferred embodiment is the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS), using the Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) as the signaling protocol for telephony applications.
With a POTS card in place, an interface to a twisted-wire pair is provided and telephones in the residence can be used in a conventional manner, with all of the phones connected to a single twisted-wire pair connected in a bus configuration to the phone outlets throughout the building. Alternatively, xe2x80x9chome runxe2x80x9d wiring may be utilized, with point-to-point connections being established between a centralized location and a particular telephone outlet or set of outlets. The advantage of home run wiring is that several phone lines can easily be supported in the home, and phones in one area can be assigned one telephone number, distinct from other numbers used for phones in other areas. Multiple POTS cards are typically used to support multiple telephone lines.
There are occasions in which a customer has multiple phone lines and in-home wiring which is in a point-to-point (xe2x80x9chome runxe2x80x9d) configuration. The customer may not want to have individual and distinct phone lines, but may want the lines grouped together. It would be advantageous to perform this grouping without requiring the house to be rewired, either by the owner or a telecommunications service company employee. On the other hand, for homes that do not have home run wiring, but utilize the simple bus structure (which connects to the telecommunications network at a single point of demarcation), a customer may desire to have additional lines supplied by the HFC network operator. This necessitates other arrangements for providing multiple telephone line services into the home.
Thus, a need remains in the prior art for a relatively simple arrangement for implementing multiple telephone lines in a single residence that allows for dynamic reconfiguration of the in-home arrangement of the telephone lines
The need remaining in the prior art is addressed by the present invention, which relates to an arrangement for managing multiple telephone lines terminating at a single location and, more particularly, to a multiplexing/demultiplexing scheme useful with digital data to control the management of the multiple telephone lines.
In accordance with the present invention, a multiplexing element (referred to as a xe2x80x9cdigital phone line eliminatorxe2x80x9d) is embedded within a communications gateway and is used to multiplex a plurality of separate incoming telephone lines onto a single line into the residence. A plurality of demultiplexers (referred to as xe2x80x9ctelephone adaptorsxe2x80x9d) are coupled to separate ones of the telephones in the residence and used to capture the telephone signal destined for that particular phone line. In a preferred arrangement, an exemplary multiplexed frame, defined by the communications gateway, includes an initial sync pulse as the preamble portion of each frame, followed by a plurality of separate time slots associated with each telephone device. Preferably, an xe2x80x9cupstreamxe2x80x9d and a xe2x80x9cdownstreamxe2x80x9d time slot is associated with each device. As devices are added to or dropped from the in-home network, the time slot assignments are modified by the communications gateway. If less than the full number of lines are utilized within the home, more than one time slot will be associated with a particular device.
Various other features, particularly the ringing sequence, can thus be controlled for each device in particular, as will be described in detail below and with reference to the accompanying drawings.